A presentation I gave to a group of primary school children on being a Government Statistician.

1. Work Focus Week
- xxx School
Ian Morton (Government Statistician)
Tuesday 13th Nov 2012

2. Contents
• Who am I and what do I like
• My early years and numeracy
• Training
• Details about my job
• My working day
• Why do people work
• Finally

3. Who am I
• My name is Ian
• xxx father – he is in class yyy
• He is really interested in
– Trains
– Pollution
– Rockets and space
• No signs (yet) that he takes after his
father’s liking of numbers

4. Introduction - Numbers
• I like numbers
• And I like working with numbers
• How many of you like numbers ?
• Not everyone does, and that’s okay
• BUT, numbers are important
4 1.6
2 1/10
1 5%
NUMBERS
€3.50 £5.20
$6 200
£1 100

5. My early years and
numeracy
• How did I decide on work choice ?
– I really liked numbers at school
– And I always got good marks for my arithmetic (exams and homework)
– more than can be said for other subjects
– When young I liked to look at football league tables
– My interest in arithmetic continued during my working life
• When did I decide on my work choice ? That’s complicated …
1. Worked in electronics – liked to fix things
2. Then worked in research at university – collected and analysed
numbers gathered from an offshore platform
3. Then worked in a bank (it was to do with monetary numbers)
4. Have been a Government statistician for 4 years

6. Training
• School – arithmetic, equations, algebra, geometry
– Adding/Subtracting/Multiplication/Division
– The equation: y=mx+c ?
– I liked reciting the times tables
– I found sequences fascinating e.g. 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54,
63 etc
• University
– I did more difficult maths and statistics
• Fair to say:
– I passed exams because I liked the subject
– Also, I had good enthusiastic maths teachers

7. Details about job – what
is statistics ?
• Statistics is the study of the collection, organisation,
analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data.
• Data refers to a collection of numbers.
• What kind of things in your life have numbers ? Examples:
– No. of goals scored in a football match
– No. of chocolates you have had in a week
– Names of children
– No. of babies born in a maternity ward
– No. of people who actually do recycling

8. Details about job – what
does a statistician do ?
• A statistician is someone who does statistics
• We collect data on “numbers of things”
– These numbers have to be accurate
• you may say you have had 5 chocolate bars this week,
• but your parents says it’s more like 8
– We check accuracy
• but I won’t ask your parents how much chocolate you have had
– We use computers to analyse these numbers
• We represent the numbers in different forms - to make
them easier to understand e.g. Graphs and Charts
• We write computer programs to do the analysis
• We create documents that show these numbers

9. Here is a chart – who is
number 1 ?
Top 10 boys' and girls' names, Scotland 2011
700
612
588
600
500 463
451 449 441
426 419 419
400
Number
366 364 362
340
323 318309 316 312
299 299
300
200
100
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Name

10. Here is a table of
numbers
Rank Boys Number Girls Number
1 Jack 588 Sophie 612
2 Lewis 463 Lily 451
3 James 426 Ava 449
4 Logan 366 Olivia 441
5 Ethan 364 Emily 419
6 Daniel 362 Lucy 419
7 Ryan 323 Isla 340
8 Alexander 318 Jessica 309
9 Harry 316 Chloe 299
10 Aaron 312 Ellie 299

11. Details about job – why
do we do it ?
• We report on these numbers
• This provides other people with
information
– Allows them to make key decisions
– e.g. Kenny MacAskill (Cabinet Secretary)
• They can make things better for us
– To improve our lives
– e.g. where to build a new Portobello high school

12. Why do people work ?
• You want to mix with people you knew previously, and many of our
friends are people who we work with.
• It helps us structure our week and gives us purpose.
• Work usually improves our confidence, and if you don't have work
you lose that.
• Work gives us a contrast to our days off – so that we enjoy our
holidays and that is important.
• And of course, you may want to pay for the things you want (or
should that be need ?)

13. Finally
• Do I enjoy it ? Yes !
• I like to know that I have helped to improve peoples lives
• I like the balance between
– collecting data,
– writing computer programs,
– charting the data,
– Performing analysis, and
– Reporting the results.
• If you want to learn more about statistics see (http://www.zoodles.com/free-online-
kids-games/8-year-old_probability--statistics?source=nav_subjects)
• If you want to see the publication “Babies First Names, 2011” (http://www.gro-
scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/births/popular-
names/2011/index.html)